"Paraskavedekatriaphobia".

That should, without doubt be the longest and weirdest word in English. Okay, before you start your protest and come up with some technicalmumbojumbosortofweirdcoined word that proves the exact opposite of my statement, lemme instead said that the word at the least, refers to the day with the unluckiest of all associations.

Friday the Thirteenth. The day the world decides to unanimously make bad things happen for everybody.

Superstition, by default, seems to be a touchy subject.

One can dismiss it offhandedly, humbugging it (just like Mr. Scrooge humbugged Marley's ghost, and what good did it do for him anyway?), but they tend to linger at some surface of your mind, at least momentarily.

For though you might be a practical person for all purposes, an ardent deleter of chain mails that claim you will die in fourteen hours, if you don't forward it, and reveling in triumph when live beyond the same time frame, there might be other superstitions more difficult to ignore.

Let's say, for instance, that a black cat crosses your path. What do you do? Sometimes, you might walk on anyway, determined to prove, that a cat is, after all, just a cat.

But what if you had a life deciding exam? Or a career making meeting. If you, for instance, could take a different path and avoid the possibility of inviting bad luck. Doesn't it seem a worthwhile effort?

I don't know the answer to that. What I do know though, is about a stray black cat in my neighborhood back home, which nobody feeds, though it's white sister(cat) gets all the benefits of food wastes. Racism is predominant towards animals too, apparently.

Fear of Friday the thirteenth comes from fear of the number thirteen.